CHEST AND BOSOM
FEMININE BEAUTY
Burke, in his chapter on “Gradual Variation” as a characteristic of Beauty, begs us to “observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts; the smoothness, the softness, the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same; the deceitful maze through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the greatest constituents of beauty?”
There is reason to believe that the beautifully-rounded form of the female bosom is a result of æsthetico-sexual selection; for primitive human tribes resemble in this respect the lower animals. Says the famous anatomist Hyrtl: “It is only among the white and yellow races that the breasts, in their compact virginal condition, have a hemispheric form, while those of negresses of a corresponding age and physique are more elongated, pointed, turned outwards and downwards; in a word, more like the teats of animals.” Even the Arabian poets sing of the charms of a goatlike breast. In the Soudan older women, when at work, sometimes throw their breasts over the shoulder to prevent them from being in the way; and “the women of the Basutos, a Kaffir tribe, carry their children on the back, and pass the breast to them under the arm.”arm.”
It is a very interesting and important fact that not only do we find more beauty among the higher than among the lower races of mankind, but the superior beauty of civilised races is also of a more permanent kind. This truth is admirably illustrated in the following remarks by Dr. Peschuel Lœschke: The breasts of the Loango negress, he says, “approach the conic rather than the hemispheric form; they often have a too small and insufficiently gradated basis, and in rare extreme cases have almost the appearance of teats, besides being unequally developed. Breasts of such a shape are naturally much more easily affected by the law of gravitation, and soon become changed into the pendent bags which we find so ugly, especially among Africans, although they also occur among other tribes, and are not unknown among civilised peoples. The superior form, with a broad basis, is naturally the more enduring, and remains in many cases an ornament of women of a more advanced age.”
Savages and Orientals, being deficient in æsthetic taste, admire an excessively-developed bust. Europeans, on the other hand, long ago recognised the connection between such a bust and clumsy, unhealthy corpulence, suggesting advanced age. The same appears to have been true of the most refined nations of antiquity. Says Professor Kollmann: “The ancient as well as the modern inhabitants of the Nile region appear, in the majority of cases, like those of India, to possess hemispheric breasts, for neither in the sphinxes or other superhuman beings, nor in the images of human beauties, do we come across pointed breasts.... The Romans did not consider large bosoms a mark of beauty. Among European women the Portuguese are said to have the largest busts, the Castilians the smallest. To judge by Rubens’s nude figures, the Netherland women appear to rival the Portuguese in exuberant bosoms.”
In Greek works of art, says Winckelmann, “the breast or bosom of female figures is never exuberant.” “Among ideal figures, the Amazons alone have large and fully-developed breasts.” “The form of the breasts in the figures of divinities is virginal in the extreme, since their beauty was made to consist in the moderateness of their size. A stone, found in the Island of Naxos, was smoothly polished and placed upon them for the purpose of repressing an undue development.”
Modern Fashion, for a wonder, endorses the Greek standard of beauty as regards a moderately-developed bust. But it was not always thus. It is Fashion that induces some savages whose breasts are naturally long and hanging to use bandages which make them still more hanging and elongated in form. In Spain, during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and in other parts of Europe, on the contrary, Fashion prescribed flat chests. Plates of lead were tied on the breasts of young girls with such force that sometimes the natural form was replaced by an actual depression where “love’s pillows” should have been. In some parts of South Germany and the Tyrol a similar fashion prevails to the present day among the lower classes, the result being not only a sacrifice of beauty, but a great mortality among the children, that have to be reared artificially in consequence of it.
But if modern Fashion has a correct standard of taste in this matter, it nevertheless encourages practices which lead to as disastrous results as the Spanish fashions of three centuries ago. “The horrible custom of wearing pads,” says the author of the Ugly Girl Papers “is the ruin of natural figures, by heating and pressing down the bosom.... A low, deep bosom, rather than a bold one, is a sign of grace in a full-grown woman, and a full bust is hardly admirable in an unmarried girl. Her figure should be all curves, but slender, promising a fuller beauty when maturity is reached. One is not fond of over-ripe years.... Due attention to the general laws of health always has its effect in restoring the bust to its roundness.... Weakness of any kind affects the contour of the figure, and it is useless to try to improve it in any other way than by restoring the strength where it is wanting.”
The same author, whose book is brimful of useful advice, not only to “ugly girls,” but to those who have beauty and wish to preserve it, also recommends battledore, swinging the skipping-rope over the shoulder, swinging by the hand from a rope, as well as playing ball, “bean bags,” pillow fights, and especially daily vocal exercises with corset off and lungs deeply inflated—as excellent means of improving the bust.
If women could be made to realise how rarely they succeed, even with the aid of the cleverest milliner, in counterfeiting a properly developed chest, they would, perhaps, be more willing to submit to the exercise or regimen requisite for the acquirement and preservation of Personal Beauty. Flat chests are a consequence of insufficient muscular exercise, insufficient fresh air, and insufficient food. The main reason why the majority of girls in the world are over-delicate and fragile is because they do not get enough properly-cooked food in which fat is introduced in such a way as to be palatable and digestible. The adipose layer between the skin and the muscles contributes so much to the undulating roundness of contour peculiar to feminine beauty, that Kollmann places it among the differentiating sexual characteristics.
Too exuberant busts, on the other hand, are the result of too much indulgence in fattening food, combined with lack of exercise in the open air, which would consume the fat. Maternity, with proper hygienic precautions, is never fatal to a fine bust.
That savages, like their civilised brethren and sisters, owe their deformed chests entirely to their indolence and neglect of the laws of health, is shown by the fact that there are notable exceptions—energetic tribes living healthy lives, and therefore blessed with beautiful figures. Thus Mr. A. R. Wallace tells us regarding some of the Amazon valley Indians that “their figures are generally superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human form. The development of the bust is such as I believe never exists in the best-formed European, exhibiting a splendid series of convex undulations, without a hollow in any part of it.” And what he says in another place regarding a neighbouring tribe explains the secret of this Beauty: “Though some of them were too fat, most of them had splendid figures, and many of them were very pretty. Before daylight in the morning all were astir and came to the river to wash. It is the chilliest hour of the twenty-four, and when we were wrapping our sheet or blanket more closely around us, we could hear the plunges and splashings of these early bathers. Rain or wind is all alike to them: their morning bath is never dispensed with.”
MASCULINE BEAUTY
Wincklemann remarks that, among the ancient Greeks, “a proudly-arched chest was regarded as a universal attribute of beauty in male figures. The father of the poets describes Neptune with such a chest, and Agamemnon as resembling him; and such a one Anakreon desired to see in the image of the youth whom he loved.”
“A prominent, arched chest,” says Professor Kollmann, “is an infallible sign of a vigorous, healthy skeleton; whereas a narrow, flat, and, still more, a bent thorax is a physical index of bodily weakness and inherited decrepitude. An arched chest imparts to a man’s whole figure an aspect of physical perfection, not to say sublimity, as may be seen in the ancient statues of gods, in which the chest is intentionally made more prominent than it ever can be in a man, presumably in order to weaken the impression of the chest’s more animal neighbour, the abdomen. There is a deep meaning in our phraseology which localises courage, boldness, martial valour, in a man’s vigorous breast.”
I have italicised several words in this quotation, because they tersely show how writers on art are guided both by the positive and negative tests of Beauty formulated in another part of this volume.
MAGIC EFFECT OF DEEP BREATHING
Indolence is the mother of ugliness. No one who realises the absolute necessity to Health of a sufficient supply of fresh air can wonder at the rarity of Beauty in the world, if he considers that nineteen people out of every twenty are too lazy to breathe properly.
It is estimated that there are from 75 to 100 cubic inches of air which always remain in a man’s lungs. About an equal amount of “supplemental” air remains after an ordinary expiration; and only 20 to 30 inches of what Professor Huxley calls “tidal air” passes in and out. But this “tidal air” can be largely increased in amount by the habit of breathing deeply and slowly, whereby an additional supply of oxygen is supplied to the lungs, which is a thousand times better for the health than quinine, iron pills, or any other tonic. There are few persons whose health and personal appearance would not be improved vastly if they would take several daily meals of fresh air—consisting of 20-50 deep inspirations in a park or some other place where the air is pure and bracing. Slowly inhale as much air as you can get into the lungs without discomfort (avoiding a strain), and then exhale again just as slowly. After a while the habit will be formed of constantly breathing more deeply than formerly, both awake and asleep; thus bringing into regular use a larger part of the lungs’ surface. It is the slight sense of fatigue at first accompanying deep breathing which prevents most people from enjoying its benefits; but when once this natural indolence is overcome the reward of deep breathing is analogous to the delicious exhilaration which follows a brisk walk or a cold bath.
It is important to note that all breathing, whether deep or ordinary, should be done through the nose, as thus the air is warmed before it reaches the delicate lungs, and the mucous membranes remain moist, thus preventing those disagreeable enemies of refreshing sleep—a dry mouth and snoring.
Habitual deep breathing adds to Personal Beauty not only by exercising the muscles of the chest, which thus becomes more arched and prominent relatively to the abdomen, but also by throwing back the neck and head and compelling the whole body to assume a straight, military attitude. We are all taught as children, says Professor Kollmann, to hold ourselves straight; but rarely is the information added that the best way to secure an erect, manly bearing and a dignified gait is by cultivating the habit of deep breathing. “It is worthy of notice that forcible breathing, such as results from a correct bearing, from prolonged sojourn and exercise in the open air, in hunting, gymnastic exercises, riding, etc., not only increases the chest for the moment, but permanently.... There are proofs in abundance that even with young persons of eighteen to twenty years, the whole circumference of the chest is capable of considerable widening under such circumstances.”
A medical writer, referring to the fact that children frequently become round-shouldered from sitting for hours and bending over a desk, makes these very sensible suggestions:—
“In the first place, the lungs should be fully expanded by drawing in all the air that is possible; this process will be aided by throwing the shoulders well back, and you should encourage your children to do this frequently in the open air when going to and coming from school. Children are easily bribed, and we would suggest to school teachers a simple and effective way of accomplishing this desirable end. This forcible expansion of the lungs will enlarge the chest and increase its circumference. Then let the teacher, at the beginning of the session, measure each child’s chest and record the circumference, then explain and demonstrate to them how to forcibly fill the lungs, and offer a premium at the end of the session to the child who shall have most increased the circumference of his chest; make it worth their while to expand their lungs, as much so as we now do for them to expand their minds, and the result will be wonderful.”
A MORAL QUESTION
An eminent authority on the physiology of the vocal organs, Dr. Lennox Browne, remarks (in Voice, Song, and Speech), that “respiratory exercises, and subsequently lessons in reading, reciting, and singing, are oftentimes of the greatest use in strengthening a weak chest; and, indeed, it is not too much to say, in arresting consumption.” Another excellent authority, Mr. A. B. Bach, points out (in his Musical Education and Vocal Culture, which should be consulted by all who wish to learn the art of Deep Breathing) that “very few vocalists die of consumption,” owing to the fact that they properly exercise their lungs and chests.
This brings us face to face with a moral question of enormous importance, to which writers on ethics have by no means as yet given the attention it loudly clamours for. Consumption, we read, “is a disease of great frequency and severity, which, in the civilised nations of Europe, produces from one-sixth to one-tenth of the total mortality, in ordinary times.” Now if, as we have just seen, consumption can be arrested and cured by proper exercise of the lungs and chest in pure air, does it not follow that the neglect of such exercises makes certain parties criminally responsible for the greater number of deaths from consumption? It is “proved by careful inquiries that the workshops of tailors, printers, and other businesses carried on in close, ill-ventilated apartments, by large numbers of workmen, are, in a very aggravated sense, nurseries of consumption. Cotton and linen factories have also been shown, when ill-regulated, to be largely responsible for the death of their inmates from this disease.”
Why should not the owners of factories who refuse to ventilate their buildings be held responsible for the ill-health, the early decrepitude and death of many of the workers, and the workers’ weakly, consumptive children who die young? As England alone has over three hundred thousand women engaged in cotton manufacture, the amount of ill-health, early senility, ugliness, consumption, etc., bred by criminal neglect of hygienic precautions, is appalling to the imagination. A case was mentioned in the American papers a few years ago, where the windows in a factory were nailed fast to prevent the poor, suffocating girls from opening them. And, strange to say, the owner of that factory was not immediately lynched. Surely, if ever a monster deserved to be hanged to the nearest tree, it was the man who ordered those windows to be nailed down.
But factory owners are by no means the only persons who are thus responsible for indirect manslaughter by foul-air poisoning. Thousands of loving mothers and fathers blaspheme their Creator in attributing the early death of their children to a “dispensation of Providence,” when the plain truth, brutally expressed, is that they killed them with the poisoned air, indigestible food, and insufficient exercise that brought on the fatal consumption. To say that the disease was hereditary is only to shift the hygienic crime on the shoulders of the grand-parents.
In human courts of justice ignorance of the law is not considered an excuse for the commission of crime. If the same principle holds true in some future world where human actions will be judged, what terrible indictments will be brought against some parents for crimes committed against the health and life of their children and grandchildren, for neglecting to learn the laws of health, as laid down in physiological and hygienic textbooks!
Inasmuch as Personal Beauty is the flower and symbol of perfect Health, it might be shown, by following out this argument, that ugliness is a sin, and man’s first duty the cultivation of Beauty.
NECK AND SHOULDER
Nowhere are the æsthetic laws of Gradation and gentle Curvature more beautifully illustrated than in the neck—the column of the head. Note how a lovely woman’s neck repeats on a small scale the delicate contours of the trunk—widened at the base and at the top, with a subtle inward slope towards the middle. Note, also, how imperceptibly it passes into the shoulders, which continue the gentle curve in a downward slope, unless prevented by the deforming corset.
Man’s neck is less cylindrical than woman’s, and presents four slightly flattened surfaces; while his shoulders are not sloping, but square. We not only pardon, but even admire and demand this conformation in man; because in judging masculine beauty we are guided by dynamic as much as by æsthetic considerations, while the fair sex is judged by the laws of beauty alone. A masculine neck is in good form if it shows traces of the sinews and muscles which give it strength; but in a woman’s neck the feminine adipose layer under the skin must obliterate all such traces of masculinity,—especially the bones at the junction of neck and breast, the prominence of which suggests emaciation and disease.
In the face of such considerations, how can any one maintain that man is more beautiful than woman? He may show more character, more individuality, more originality than a fine woman, but more beauty never. And the fact that in Sexual Selection women have always been chiefly guided by dynamic considerations—i.e. vigour, boldness, “manliness”—whereas men have been fascinated by beauty alone, explains why, as Schopenhauer asserts, women are the “unæsthetic sex,” and why their taste for Personal Beauty, not being exercised, like that of man, in the selection of a mate, is so lamentably callous to the deformities resulting from corsets and other instruments of torture.
The neck being the pivot on which the head executes its movements, it is evident that it requires attention from the point of view of Grace as well as of Beauty. To how many women has it ever occurred that as the feet are taught to dance lithely, the arms to execute eloquent gestures, so the neck should be trained to naturally assume graceful attitudes? Great paintings and famous actresses should be studied from this point of view. Always bear in mind that grace of movement often excels beauty of form in the power of inspiring Romantic Love. And remember that any pains you take to acquire grace will not only multiply your own charms, but will establish a habit of graceful movement in your muscles which will be inherited by your children. It is owing to this circumstance that the children of truly refined families are born with an ease, grace, and dignity of movement and mien which it is impossible for “self-made” persons to acquire in a lifetime, because they are not born with an inherited talent for graceful movement.
ARM AND HAND
EVOLUTION AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCES
One of the redeeming features of what is ironically called “full-dress” is the opportunity it gives of admiring a woman’s shapely neck, shoulders, and arms—if she has such. No healthy woman of the well-to-do classes need have an ill-favoured arm if she has a sensible mother, who compels her from her childhood to exercise her muscles. The great preponderance of leathery, angular, bony arms at ballrooms shows, therefore, how shamefully the hygienic arts of personal adornment are neglected in our best society. The stifling heat which commonly prevails at social gatherings suggests the thought that many ladies are indifferent to the display of their bony arms on the grounds given in Sydney Smith’s exclamation: “Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.”
A meagre, skinny arm is objectionable not only because it offends against all the conditions of Beauty—plump roundness, softness, fresh colour, smoothness, gradual tapering to the wrist—but because it is associated with the aspect of old age and disease; and again, because it suggests man’s lowly origin by its approximation to the appearance of the arms in our simian country cousins.
Man’s arm has become differentiated from the ape’s not only in the matter of greater muscular rotundity and smoothness, i.e. loss of hair, but also in regard to length. An ape’s arms are much longer than a white man’s, the negro’s being intermediate. Says Mr. Tylor: “In an upright position and reaching down with the middle finger, the gibbon can touch its foot, the orang its ankle, the chimpanzee its knee, while man only reaches partly down his thigh.... Negro soldiers standing at drill bring the middle finger-tip an inch or two nearer the knee than white men can do, and some have been even known to touch the knee-pan.” Taking this in connection with the fact that the arms of sailors, who use them constantly in climbing, are longer than those of soldiers, we may safely infer that man’s arms have gradually become shorter because he has ceased to climb trees; while the greater muscular rotundity, especially of the forearm, has been acquired through the varied activity and movements of the hand and fingers: a circumstance almost self-evident on physiological principles, and furthermore corroborated by the fact that negroes, unskilled in trades which call for manipulation of the separate fingers, again occupy an intermediate position. “Even in muscular negroes the arms are less rotund,” says Professor Carl Vogt; and, according to Van der Hœven, the skin between the fingers reaches up higher in the negro, which must impede activity.
The peculiar arrangement of the hair on man’s arm has been referred to by Wallace and Darwin as one of the countless signs arguing our descent from apelike ancestors. On the arm of man, as of most anthropoid apes, the hair “tends to converge from above and below to a point at the elbow.” Now it is known that the gorilla, as well as the orang, “sits in pelting rain with his hands over his head”; and Mr. Wallace, therefore, suggests that the present inclination of the hair on man’s arms is simply a survival of the time when his arboreal ancestors used to sit in that fashion, the hair having gradually assumed the direction which would most easily allow the rain to run off.
The evolution theory that the hair on the arm, as on the body in general, was lost through Sexual Selection, is corroborated by the fact that woman’s arm has made more progress toward complete smoothness than man’s, owing to the circumstance that man is in Sexual Selection more guided by æsthetic, woman by dynamic, considerations. Yet there can be no doubt that a hairy arm and hand are always ugly, in man as in woman, not only on account of their simian suggestiveness, but because they cover the smooth skin and its delicate tints, and, moreover, especially if black, are very apt to make the arm and hand look as if they needed a good scrubbing. Hair on the hand may sometimes be permanently removed by passing the hand quickly and repeatedly through a large flame—a much less painful process than the use of pincers.
The muscular deviations from the lines of beauty are much more pardonable in a man’s arm than the hair, although it is evident that a professional athlete’s excessively muscular arm is æsthetically objectionable, however much it may be admired on other grounds. To feminine beauty, and the chances of inspiring Love, an arm which is so muscular as to obliterate the lines of beauty is absolutely fatal. Among the labouring classes there are many women whose arms are so hard and sinewy that the very bones to which they are attached have become heavy and masculine, so that it becomes difficult to tell a woman’s from a man’s skeleton, which ordinarily is very easy.
CALISTHENICS AND MASSAGE
It is, however, hardly necessary to refer to these facts as a warning to girls not to use their arms too much. The danger almost always lies the other way, and what girls need is a set of intelligent directions for securing a shapely arm. If the arm is too plump the method discussed in preceding pages for the general reduction of corpulence will also affect the arm. If too thin, which is much more frequently the case in young women, don’t be afraid that exercise will make them thinner—on the ground that hard labourers are commonly meagre. It is only excessive exercise that produces leanness, by burning away all the fat. Moderate exercise develops the muscles—the plastic material of beauty—and stimulates the appetite, so that the fat-cushion under the skin also increases in depth, covering up the angular outlines of bones, muscles, and sinews.
It is a suggestive fact that the word calisthenics—"the art of promoting the health of the body by exercise"—comes from two Greek words meaning “beautiful” and “strength.”
So many books have been written on calisthenics that it is needless to repeat here minute directions for training the muscles of the arm or any other part of the body. One bit of sensible advice may, however, be quoted from the Ugly Girl Papers: “Throwing quoits and sweeping are good exercises to develop the arms. There is nothing like three hours of housework a day for giving a woman a good figure, and if she sleep in tight cosmetic gloves, she need not fear that her hands will be spoiled. The time to form the hand is in youth, and with thimbles for the finger-tips, and close gloves lined with cold cream, every mother might secure a good hand for her daughter.”
It is an ill wind that blows no man good. The incessant piano-banging and violin-scraping of thousands of unmusical young ladies has at least one thing to be said in its favour: it helps to round and beautify the arms of these young players.
Active exercise is the surest and quickest way of securing muscular rotundity. But in cases where, owing to some infirmity, long-continued spontaneous exertion is out of the question, massage, which has been defined as “passive exercise,” may be resorted to as of calisthenic value. It should only be performed by an expert, and always centripetally, i.e. in the direction of the heart. It facilitates the flow of the venous current, which in the arms and lower limbs has to struggle upwards against the force of gravitation; and to this is partly due its refreshing effect. As Americans are the most nervous and sensitive people in the world, it seems probable that the feeling of ease following the facilitating of the venous flow has taught them instinctively to assume that peculiar position, with the feet on a chair or table, which has been so often ridiculed by Europeans.
THE “SECOND FACE”
“The beauty of a youthful hand,” says Winckelmann “consists in a moderate degree of plumpness, and a scarcely observable depression, resembling a soft shadow, over the articulations of the fingers, where, if the hand is plump, there is a dimple. The fingers taper gently towards their extremities, like finely-shaped columns; and, in art, the articulations are not expressed. The fore part of the terminating joint is not bent over, nor are the nails very long, though both are common in the works of modern sculptors.”
Balzac pointed out that “men of superior intellect almost always have beautiful hands, the perfection of which is the distinctive indication of a high destination.... The hand is the despair of sculptors and painters when they wish to express the changing labyrinth of its mysterious lineaments.”
A fine hand is, indeed, a sign of superior intelligence in a much more comprehensive sense than that which Balzac had in mind. The difference between the simian and human faces is hardly greater than the progress from an ape’s hand to a man’s in beauty of outline, smoothness of surface, grace of movement, and varied utility. The ape’s hand is hairy on the upper surface, hard and callous on the lower. Except in climbing, its movements are clumsy. The fingers have adapted themselves to the need of climbing, and have become permanently bent in front, so that when the animal goes on all fours it cannot walk on the palm, but only on the bent knuckles.
A step higher we have the negro’s hands, in which the fingers are less independent and nimble, and the palmar fat-cushions less developed and sensitive, than in our hands. These fat-cushions serve to protect the blood-vessels as well as the delicate nerves, which make the hand the principal organ of touch. The muscles of the hand are more easily and instantaneously obedient to the will than those of any other part of the body, except those of the mouth and eyes; and hence it is that the hands are almost as good an index of a man’s character, habits, and profession as his face, and have been aptly called his “second face.”
Division of labour is the index of progress in the evolution of organs. To the fact that his feet have become exclusively adapted to locomotion, leaving the hands free to serve as tools, man chiefly owes his superiority to other animals. For what would superior intellect avail him without the implements needed to carry out its schemes? Feeling, grasping, handling, writing, sewing, playing an instrument, squeezing, caressing,—these are a few of the innumerable functions of the human hand; while the ape’s is good for little but climbing. The finger language of deaf mutes shows to what subtle intellectual uses the hands can be put; and as for emotional expression, are there any facial muscles which can indicate finer shades of feeling than the infinitely varied touch with which a pianist or violinist gives utterance to every mood and phase of human passion?
No wonder that, just as the face has had its physiognomists and phrenologists, so the hand its chiromancers, who pretended, by looking at its lines, not only to read character, but even to foretell one’s fate. Books on this subject are indeed still published, which shows that the race of fools is in no immediate danger of extinction. Wrinkles in the face do bear some relation to character and experience; but surely no one needs to be told that the palmar lines are purely accidental—caused by the manner in which the skin is folded when we close the hand.
FINGER-NAILS
Our nails are modified claws—modified to their advantage.advantage. When properly cared for, they are one of the greatest personal ornaments—beginning and ending as they do with a delicate curve, rounded on the surface, suffused with a gentle blush, and smooth as ivory. They may also serve as a mode of expression and index of nationality, as seen in these remarks by Mr. E. B. Tylor: “In the Southern United States, till slavery was done away a few years ago, the traces of Negro descent were noted with the utmost nicety. Not only were the mixed breeds regularly classed as mulattos, quadroons, and down to octoroons, but even where the mixture was so slight that the untrained eye noticed nothing beyond a brunette complexion, the intruder, who had ventured to sit down at a public dinner-table, was called upon to show his hands, and the African taint detected by the dark tinge at the root of the finger-nails.”
Becker remarks that among the ancient Greeks “it was considered very unseemly to appear with nails unpared”; nor did the Greeks consider it beneath their dignity, like the Romans, to pare their own nails.
The Greeks, being an æsthetic nation, were guided in the treatment of their nails by the sense of beauty. Elsewhere, however, the idiotic notion that laziness is aristocratic led to a different treatment of the nails. Mr. Tylor, in his Anthropology, gives an illustration of the hand of a Chinese ascetic whose finger-nails are five or six times as long as his fingers. “Long finger-nails,” he remarks, “are noticed even among ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or at least as a pretence that they are there.”
Useless hands, with elongated nails, reverting to a clawlike character, as “symbols of nobility!” The study of evolution throws much sarcastic light on the fashionable follies of mankind.
MANICURE SECRETS
According to the New York Analyst: “There are not nearly as many secrets in manicure as people imagine. A little ammonia or borax in the water you wash your hands with, and that water just lukewarm, will keep the skin clean and soft. A little oatmeal mixed with the water will whiten the hands. Many people use glycerine on their hands when they go to bed, wearing gloves to keep the bedding clean; but glycerine don’tdon’t agree with every one. It makes some skins harsh and red. These people should rub their hands with dry oatmeal and wear gloves in bed. The best preparation for the hands at night is white of egg, with a grain of alum dissolved in it.... The roughest and hardest hands can be made soft and white in a month’s time by doctoring them a little at bedtime, and all the tools you need are a nail-brush (avoid metal), a bottle of ammonia, a box of powdered borax, and a little fine white sand to rub the stains off, or a cut of lemon. Manicures use acids in their shops, but the lemon is quite as good, and isn’t poisonous, while the acids are.”
In the Ugly Girl Papers the following recipes are given:—
“To give a fine colour to the nails, the hands and fingers must be well lathered and washed with scented soap; then the nails must be rubbed with equal parts of cinnabar and emery, followed by oil of bitter almonds. To take white specks from the nails, melt equal parts of pitch and turpentine in a small cup; add to it vinegar and powdered sulphur. Rub this on the nails and the specks will soon disappear. Pitch and myrrh melted together may be used with the same results.”
But, after all, what is the use of beautifying one’s hands as long as ladies bow to the Fashion Fetish, which compels them to conceal them in the skins of animals? To wear gloves on going out, as a protection against rough weather and for the sake of cleanliness, is rational enough; but to wear them at social gatherings is almost as absurd as the compulsory impenetrable veils of Turkish women; for does not the hand rank next to the face as an index of character?
Another stupidity of fashion is our enforced and cultivated right-handedness. Despite the force of inherited habit, children show a natural inclination toward using both their hands equally; but they are constantly scolded and punished, until they have succeeded, like their parents, in reducing one hand to a state of imbecility, so to speak, which is constantly betrayed in awkward, ungraceful action. Practising on a musical instrument, with special attention to the left hand, has a tendency to correct this awkwardness. Indeed, is there any part of the body that music does not benefit? Dancing to a Strauss waltz gives elasticity to the limbs and grace to the gait; singing is the most useful kind of lung-gymnastics, and develops the chest; a musically-trained ear modulates the voice to sweeter expression; while equally skilled and graceful hands are acquired by practice on a musical instrument. So that the word music, though much less comprehensive than among the ancient Greeks, has lost none of the magic, beautifying power they ascribed to it.
Much of the ugliness in the world is due to the neglect of parents in properly supervising the actions of their children, to prevent the formation of bad habits, which ruin beauty irretrievably. As an instance of what can be done in this direction may be cited the following remark by a Philadelphia surgeon: “The school-girl habit of biting the nails must be broken up at once. If in children, rub a little extract of quassia on the finger-tips. This is so bitter that they are careful not to taste it twice. Not only the nails, but the whole finger and hand is often forfeited by neglect in this respect.”
By travelling from the shoulder down to the finger-tips we have apparently interrupted our steady progress from toe to tip of the body. But we shall see in a moment that the interruption is only apparent, for our subject leads naturally “from Hand to Mouth.”
JAW, CHIN, AND MOUTH
HANDS VERSUS JAWS
Just as among some male ruminants the growth of horns as a means of defence has apparently led to the disappearance of the canine teeth, so man’s erect attitude, by leaving his hands free to do much of the work which inferior animals do with their jaws and teeth, has gradually modified the appearance of his face, greatly to its advantage. “The early male forefathers of man,” says Darwin, “were probably furnished with great canine teeth; but as they gradually acquired the habit of using stones, clubs, or other weapons, for fighting with their enemies or rivals, they would use their jaws and teeth less and less. In this case the jaws, together with the teeth, would become reduced in size, as we may feel almost sure from innumerable analogous cases.” And in another place he remarks: “As the prodigious difference between the skulls of the two sexes in the orang and gorilla stands in close relation with the development of the immense canine teeth in the males, we may infer that the reduction of the jaws and teeth in the early progenitors of man must have led to a most striking and favourable change in his appearance.”
Why a “favourable” change? No doubt a male gorilla, if it could be taught to pronounce an æsthetic judgment, would indignantly scout the notion that our weak, delicate jaw is preferable to its own massive bones; nor would a prognathous or “forward-jawed” African or Australian admit that he is less beautiful than the orthognathous or “upright-jawed” European. What right, then, have we to claim that we alone have beautiful faces? Must we not admit, with the Jeffrey Alison school, that it is all “a matter of taste,” and that in so far as a heavy, projecting jaw appears beautiful to a gorilla or a savage, it is beautiful to them?
The general answer to such questions as these has already been given in another part of this volume. We need therefore only say in brief résumé that a heavy, projecting, clumsy, brutal jaw probably appears to a gorilla or a Hottentot neither ugly nor beautiful. The æsthetic sense—as we can see among ourselves—is the last and highest product of civilisation. Monkeys are apparently excited by brilliant colours, but to beauty of form neither apes nor the lower races and classes of man appear to be susceptible.
Should a negro, however, on having his attention called to this matter, claim that his prognathous face is more beautiful than our orthognathous face, the retort simple would be that his imagination is not sufficiently educated to understand our more refined and delicate beauty; just as an Esquimaux prefers a rotten egg to a fresh one, a working man a glass of fusil oil to one of tokay—simply because their senses of taste and smell are not sufficiently refined to appreciate or even detect the delicate flavour of a fresh egg and the subtle bouquet of wine.
Of the positive tests of beauty, Delicacy is the one which most emphatically condemns the heavy, prognathous jaw and the accompanying big mouth. Massive bones and clumsy movements are everywhere the signs of excessive toil, fatal to beauty, as may be seen on comparing the angular and almost masculine skeleton of a labouring woman with the delicately-articulated joints of a “society woman”; or the heavy structure of a dray-horse with the fine contours of a race-horse; showing that Delicacy is always associated with the other elements of beauty—Curvature, Gradation, Expression, etc.
On the manner in which the beauty of the mouth is proportioned to its capability for Expression, Mr. Ruskin has made the following interesting observations: “Taking the mouth, another source of expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish; or perhaps where, without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator; and then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds’ beaks, wherein there is much obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles (compare the bills of the duck and the eagle); and thence we reach the finely-developed lips of the carnivora (which nevertheless lose their beauty in the actions of snarling and biting); and from these we pass to the nobler, because gentler and more sensitive, of the horse, camel, and fawn, and so again up to man: only the principle is less traceable in the mouths of the lower animals, because they are only in slight measure capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low function; whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means of expression, beyond and above its lower functions.... The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or intellectual virtue expressed by it.”
Shakspere, by the way, seems to differ from Ruskin’s theory implied in this last sentence. According to Ruskin, animals “lose their beauty in the actions of snarling and biting.” But man has an action similar to snarling, namely, what Bell calls “that arching of the lips so expressive of contempt, hatred, and jealousy.” It is to this that Shakspere refers in these lines—
But the word “beautiful” is here evidently taken by Shakspere in the wider sense of interesting and characteristic, and not in the special æsthetic sense of formal and emotional beauty.
Delicacy and the capacity for varied and subtle Expression—these, we may conclude, are the chief criteria of beauty in the lower part of the face. Anatomically, it may be well to state here, the word “face” does not include the forehead, but only extends from the chin to the eyebrows. The upper and posterior part is called the cranium or skull. It seems odd at first not to include the forehead in the face, but there are scientific grounds for making such a division, for a discussion of which the reader must be referred to some anatomical text-book (vide Kollmann, pp. 82-85).
To a certain extent the face and the cranium are independent of one another in development and physiognomic significance. And it should be noted that, contrary to the general impression, in estimating the degree of intelligence and refinement, the face is a safer guide than the cranium; for there are many powerful brains in low and even receding foreheads, whereas a large projecting jaw is almost invariably a sign of vulgarity or lack of delicate feeling. We do not find a dog ugly because of his receding forehead; but we do find that the most infallible way of giving a man’s picture a brutal expression is by enlarging the jaw and mouth. It is the deadliest weapon of the caricaturist.
What makes a gorilla so frightfully ugly is the prominence and massive preponderance of his face over his cranium. It is his monstrous jaws, with their “simply brutal armature” of teeth, that give him such a repulsive appearance. The gorilla’s mouth, as Professor Kollmann remarks, is a caricature even from the animal point of view. How much more delicate and refined are a dog’s or cat’s jaws and teeth in comparison! Unfortunately, while man is a savage, or when he relapses into brutal habits, it is the gorilla’s mouth and teeth that his resemble, and not the cat’s or the dog’s.
A small face being therefore a test of refined beauty, we have here another proof of the superiority of feminine over masculine beauty. For although woman has a smaller cranium than man, it is larger than man’s relatively to the face. In other words, women have smaller and less massive faces than men, both absolutely and relatively to their size. Kollmann, who is not an evolutionist, endeavours to account for this difference on the ground that men are more addicted to the pleasures of the table than women. But surely, though women eat less than men, they do not make much less use of their teeth; and for any deficiency in this respect they more than make up by the constant wagging of their jaws in small-talk. It is infinitely more probable that Darwin is right in attributing the massiveness of the masculine jaws to the accumulated, inherited effects of constant use in fighting with enemies and rivals—contests from which the passive females have as a rule been exempt.
It is the assumption by the hands of many of the former functions of the teeth that has led to the decrease in the size of the teeth, and, in consequence, of the jaw-bones to which they are attached. Some writers have even claimed that the wisdom-teeth are becoming rudimentary, and will ultimately disappear, because there will be no room for them in our gradually diminishing jaws. We may feel confident, however, that if this reduction in the size of the jaws tended to go too far, the sense of beauty and Sexual Selection, i.e. Love, would step in to arrest the process, by favouring the survival of those who gave their teeth sufficient exercise to prevent the lower part of the face from becoming too much reduced in size. Our sense of beauty demands that the distance from tip of chin to nose should be about the same as the length of the nose and the height of the forehead. Should these proportions be violated, Love will restore the balance; for no lover would ever select a face in which the chin almost touches the nose, as in infants, whose teeth and jaws are not yet developed, or as in old men and women, in whom the loss of the teeth has led to a collapse of the jaws, resulting in a loss of proportion, clumsy movements, and prognathism.
DIMPLES IN THE CHIN
An oval, well-rounded chin is one of the most important elements of formal beauty, and is a characteristic trait of humanity; for man is the only animal that has a chin. Lavater distinguishes three principal varieties of chin: the receding chin, which is peculiar to lower races and types; the chin which does not project beyond a line dropped from the lips; and the chin which does project beyond that line. Of all parts of the face the chin has the least variety of form and capability of emotional expression. Physiognomists have expended much ingenuity in attempting to trace a connection between various forms of the chin and traits of character; but their generalisations have no scientific value. It is probable that often a very small, weak chin indicates weak desires and a vacillating character, while an energetic chin, like Richard Wagner’s, indicates the iron will of a reformer. But the connection between the development of the brain and special modifications of the bones of the chin is too remote to permit a safe inference in individual cases.
In ancient Egyptian art, as Winckelmann points out, “the chin is always somewhat small and receding, whereby the oval of the face becomes imperfect.”
One of the most essential conditions of beauty in a chin, if we may judge by the descriptions of novelists, is a dimple. Yet it is doubtful whether a dimple can ever be accepted as a special mark of beauty. Temporary dimples (for the production of which there seems to be a special muscle) are interesting as a mode of transient emotional expression. But permanent dimples interrupt the regular gradation of the beauty-curve, and too often indicate that the plump roundness, so fascinating in a woman’s face, has passed the line which indicates corpulence and obliterates the delicate lines of expression.
Dimples occur not only in the chin, but also in the cheek, at the elbow-joints, on the back, and in plump female hands at the knuckles. They are caused by a dense tissue of fibres, blood-vessels, and nerves holding down the skin tightly in one place, and thus preventing such an accumulation of fat between the skin and muscles as is seen in the surrounding parts.
Tommaseo (quoted by Mantegazza) probably had in mind the connection between corpulence and mental indolence when he said that “a dimple in the chin indicates more physical than mental grace.”
“As a dimple—by the Greeks termed νύμφη—is an isolated and somewhat accidental adjunct to the chin, it was not,” says Winckelmann, “regarded by the Greek artists as an attribute of abstract and pure beauty, though it is so considered by modern writers.” With a few unimportant exceptions, it is not found in “any beautiful ideal figure which has come down to us.” And although Varro prettily calls a dimple in a statue of Bathyllus an impress from the finger of Cupid, Winckelmann thinks that when dimples do occur in Greek art works they must be attributed to a conscious deviation from the highest principles of art for the sake of personal portraiture. “In images whose beauties were of a lofty cast, the Greek artists never allowed a dimple to break the uniformity of the chin’s surface. Its beauty, indeed, consists in the rounded fulness of its arched form, to which the lower lip, when full, imparts additional size.”
REFINED LIPS
Whereas the beauty of the chin is purely physical, its neighbour, the mouth, has the emotional charm of expression besides the formal beauty of outline. When we come to speak of the ears we shall find that some animals have five times as many muscles as man, wherewith they can execute expressive movements with those organs. But in the number and delicacy of the muscles of the mouth no animal approaches man, in whom they are more numerous even than those which serve for the varied expression of the eyes. Great as is the difference between an animal’s forefoot and man’s hand, it is not so great as the difference between an animal’s and a man’s mouth. Chewing and sucking are almost the only functions of the animal’s mouth, while man moulds his lips into a thousand shapes in singing, whistling, pouting, blowing, speaking, smiling, kissing, etc. From being a mere mechanism for masticating food, it has become the most delicate instrument for intellectual and emotional expression.
Sir Charles Bell’s testimony that “the lips are, of all the features, the most susceptible of action, and the most direct index of the feelings,” has already been quoted in the chapter on Kissing. Could Rubinstein himself express a wider range of emotions, by subtle variations of pianistic touch, than our lips can express degrees and varieties of affection in the family, friendly, conjugal, and love kisses? And can we find, even in the music of Chopin and Wagner, harmonic changes more infinitely varied than the countless subtle modulations of the human lips, as revealed in the fact that deaf mutes can be taught to understand what we say to them merely by watching the movements of our lips?
“The mouth, which is the end of love” (Dante), is also the seat of Love’s smiles; “and in her smile Love’s image you may see.” We often read of smiling eyes, and the eyes do partake in the expression of smiling, by increased brightness and the wrinkling of the surrounding muscles. But that the mouth is a more important factor in this expression can be shown by painting the face of a man with a sad expression, and then pasting on a smiling mouth, which will give the man at once a happy expression, notwithstanding the unchanged eyes. In life the muscles of the mouth and eyes execute certain movements in harmony. “In all exhilarating emotions,” says Bell, “the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nostril, and the angle of the mouth are raised. In the depressing emotions it is the reverse.”
For the execution of these diverse movements, which make it the most expressive organ of the body, the mouth employs more than a dozen important groups of muscles, some of which originate in the chin, some in the cheeks, some in the lips themselves, enabling them to execute independent movements.
While surpassing the eyes in expressiveness, the mouth rivals them in beauty of form and colour. “The lips answer the purpose of displaying a more brilliant red than is to be seen elsewhere,” says Winckelmann. “The under lips should be fuller than the upper.” In Greek divinities the lips are not always closed: “and this is especially the case with Venus, in order that her countenance may express the languishing softness of desire and love.” At the same time, “very few of the figures which have been represented laughing, as some Satyrs or Fauns are, show the teeth.” This is natural enough, for the long-continued exposure of the teeth would only result in a grimace. It is only in the transient smile that the teeth may peep forth; and then what a charming contrast their ivory curve and lustrous colour presents to the full-blooded, soft, pink lips!